A New York judge has thwarted Jay-Z’s efforts to dismiss sexual assault allegations leveled against him and fellow rapper and hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Jay-Z, whose legal name is Shawn Carter, was named alongside Combs in a civil lawsuit that accuses the two men of raping an underage girl, identified in the suit as “Jane Doe.”
In a court order issued Thursday, Judge Analisa Torres permitted Doe to proceed with her case anonymously, despite a demand earlier this month from Alex Spiro, an attorney for Carter, that she be publicly identified.
Torres also criticized Spiro for what she described as a “relentless filing of combative motions containing inflammatory language and ad hominem attacks,” calling it “inappropriate, a waste of judicial resources, and a tactic unlikely to benefit his client.”
“The Court will not fast-track the judicial process merely because counsel demands it,” she wrote.
In her lawsuit, Doe says she was assaulted by Carter and Combs while an unnamed female celebrity watched. The alleged incident took place at a New York party following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards, when Doe was 13 years old and Carter and Combs would have both been in their early 30s.
The suit was initially filed in October and, at the time, did not mention Carter specifically. A version of the complaint filed earlier this month and obtained by HuffPost had been amended to include his name.
Carter responded to the lawsuit by calling out Tony Buzbee, an attorney representing Doe and more than a hundred other people who have accused Combs of sexual misconduct, in a blistering statement posted on Dec. 8 to X, formerly Twitter.
“These allegations are so heinous in nature that I implore you to file a criminal complaint, not a civil one!! Whomever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away, would you not agree?” he wrote. “These alleged victims would deserve real justice if that were the case.”
Speaking to reporters in New York on Dec. 16, Spiro deemed the accusations against Carter “a fantasy,” saying, “We expect the case to be dismissed. If it’s not, we expect this all to crumble.”
“None of the details are right because this never happened,” Spiro added. “When something isn’t real and when something doesn’t happen, you’re going to get the details wrong because you weren’t really there.”
